Manchester based digital marketing agency Digital Next are seeing the fruits of over three years worth of investment in AI, benefiting both the business and its clients.
While the arrival of AI in its current form may have only come to the fore in the last 12 months, CEO Justin Blackhurst and COO Mark Blackhurst have been championing AI for the past two and a half years, putting in place a team-wide one day per week to be learning and growing Digital Next AI initiatives. The result of that – a series of tools that have improved efficiency by 30 to 50 percent.
Justin, who co-founded Digital Next with his brother Mark, said:
“We’ve continually upskilled through Google-led training, invite-only tech summits in London, and hands-on experimentation with AI platforms. More recently, we’ve completed multiple structured AI courses across SEO, paid media, automation and data analysis, combined with hundreds of hours of internal testing and team training.”
Building their own AI-driven systems, Digital Next has reduced reliance on multiple third-party tools, consolidating functionality that previously required separate SEO, reporting and analysis platforms. This has resulted in meaningful cost savings internally, while also giving more control, flexibility and transparency over the data that is used.
Importantly, it also allowed the agency to tailor tools specifically to how clients actually work, which has had a huge impact not only on productivity, but client satisfaction and relations too. Recently, the agency completed a task that had originally been quoted £170,000 and three months’ work in around a week and at a fraction of the quoted price thanks to the AI tools, initiatives and training the business had put in place. The time saved is then reinvested into higher-value work such as strategy, testing and innovation, rather than simply doing the same work quicker.
One client also said of the AI expertise provided by Digital Next:
“The impact of the AIO work has been really impressive. We’ve seen a 980% increase in keywords appearing in the AIO sections, which is far beyond what we expected at this stage. What’s been equally valuable is the quality of those rankings – a 30% uplift in keywords now sitting in positions one to three has made a real difference to visibility. Combined with a 77% increase in organic traffic, it’s clear this isn’t just surface-level optimisation but work that’s genuinely driving meaningful growth.”
Justin continued:
“AI will continue to shift our role from execution-heavy to strategy-led. As automation handles more of the repetitive and technical groundwork, agencies like Digital Next will focus on interpretation, commercial decision-making and creative problem-solving. We also expect AI-search platforms to change how brands are discovered, which is why we’re already investing in AI-Visibility beyond traditional Google rankings.”
That is already taking effect, with users relying more heavily on AI overview boxes in search engines and using ChatGPT as a means of search itself. That’s evolved SEO strategies across the board, with the agency’s investment in AI seeing one client increase the number of results within AI overviews in Google by over 1,400 percent and an audience increase of over seven million as a result.
While many in the industry are delaying investment in AI or are reluctant to make moves, Mark Blackhurst added:
“In an era where organisations adopt automation tech faster than ever, most businesses still see pilots sit idle and projects fail to deliver impact. At DigitalNext, we believe the real challenge isn’t the technology – it’s adoption, trust, and human context. That’s why Automation AI was designed around people, not just platforms.
“True automation isn’t about replacing work – it’s about freeing people to focus on what they do best by seamlessly blending human insight with AI-powered execution.”
